Shining a Light on Business Presentations

You’re on your feet, your slides are ready, you’re all set to win over your audience – but your presentation falls flat!

What happened?

Well, millions of business presentations are made around the world every day, and it must be acknowledged that too many of them do not achieve their objective – which means an awful lot of wasted time and effort.

There could be several reasons for this sad state of affairs, but the solutions are not rocket science – and they’re actually readily available.

Technology

It’s easy to overlook the importance of the one thing that is common to pretty much every business presentation - the projector. The technology driving this essential piece of hardware has evolved dramatically since the introduction of digital images.

Today, the dominant projection technology is 3LCD, pioneered by Epson, the world’s top projector maker for 15 years in a row and the market leader in Southeast Asia.

3LCD projectors produce amazing detail and unbelievably bright and natural colour, up to three times more colour brightness than other projectors and with a three times wider colour gamut. This means there is no need to lower the lights – Epson’s 3LCD projectors deliver dazzling high-definition images, vivid contrast and powerful colour intensity, even in bright ambient surroundings. With such a highly efficient light source, 3LCD laser projectors are ideal for large venues such as lecture rooms, auditoriums and concert halls as well as smaller meeting rooms.

Back to basics

Now we’ve addressed the technology, let’s look at the software – which includes you, the presenter.

All presentations are an amalgamation of content, audience and delivery. When you seamlessly combine all these elements, your presentation has a higher chance of successfully delivering your message.

Remember, your objective is to inform, entertain and persuade. Unfortunately, the truth is that most people have a limited attention span, so try to boil the message of your presentation down to three key points that your audience absolutely must understand.

Your content obviously needs to be relevant to your audience. Are you delivering a marketing report or financial plan to a small group of colleagues in your own offices, or is your presentation a keynote at an industry conference with an audience of hundreds? The nature of the audience determines the appearance of your slides - graphs and charts are appropriate for a group looking at financials, product photography will work well for marketing, and video clips from the Chief Executive can help to deliver corporate messages.

Beware the PowerPoint toolbox

Just because the software allows you to use special effects, animations and transitions doesn’t mean you should include as many as you can. Garish colours and over-busy slides distract the audience’s attention from your content. Stick to one colour scheme, one font of at least 30-point, and a single animation style throughout the deck.

In all cases, avoid filling your slides with dense blocks of text. One useful rule of thumb is the “six-by-six” rule – no more than six bullet points per slide, and no more than six words in each bullet.

It's a common mistake to assume that your slides are your presentation. They are not – they are there to help you deliver your presentation, serving as a visual support for what you’re saying. If your slides contain everything you’re going to say, it’s guaranteed that the audience will read those words. And when they’re doing that, they can’t listen to you. And the depressing conclusion is that if your audience is not listening to you, the need for you as a presenter is gone.

Power Tools

As a presenter, you can draw on a number of factors to supercharge your delivery. Body language is crucial - a confident stance, making eye contact and controlled movement that engages without distracting anyone can help to establish your authority. Your voice, too, is potentially a powerful tool. Well-judged projection, variation in volume, tone and pace, and the judicious use of the pause contribute to a convincing delivery of your message and your ownership of the room.

Overcoming Your Nerves

Fear of public speaking is a leading phobia in every culture. Actually, if you can get them under control, pre-performance nerves can help to energize your presentation. There are numerous psychological and physical techniques to help you with this, including identifying and facing down your fears, deep breathing, gentle head massage and light exercise before speaking.

Most important of all is preparation. Make time to rehearse your presentation – as many times as possible. Record yourself presenting and critique your own performance. Present to a trusted colleague, and insist they be honest with their feedback.

Preparation also includes familiarizing yourself ahead of time with the room and the equipment you’ll be using. Are the steps up to the stage secure? Does the remote control work? Do you have a back-up of your presentation on a thumb drive? And do you have confidence in the projector?

Epson 3LCD projectors

If it’s an Epson 3LCD projector, your worries are at an end. As highlighted above, 3LCD is a sophisticated, innovative technology that utilizes three chips to deliver vibrant, true-to-life and consistent images for any audience, in any venue.

But beyond that, 3LCD projectors are highly efficient and much more reliable than competing technology. Compared to the rapidly spinning colour wheel in a single-chip DLP projector, 3LCD projectors have no moving parts in the image generation engine, so there is no risk of mechanical failure.

They also use 25% less power than single-chip DLP projectors. This in turn means lower operating heat, allowing the lamp in a 3LCD projector to last longer.

Epson has developed high brightness laser projectors in their range of 3LCD business projectors with a laser-light source that can deliver up to 20,000 hours of maintenance free use – products that will keep them way out ahead in a segment that’s forecast to grow 125% by 2020.

If you’ve created and rehearsed your presentation with our tips in mind, you can be confident that your Epson high brightness 3LCD projector will deliver mind-blowing image quality and make your presentation the star of the show.